Thursday, November 26, 2009

Continuing with my Kinugawa Hot Spring story, once we returned to Tokyo, it was dinner time. Yukio took us to an izakaya called "Abu-san" that he used to frequent and is very popular with sports athletes and television stars alike. We didn't see any however Mikako has been here before and has seen a few celebrities. Oh, I wasn't familiar, but "Abu-san" is a manga about baseball featuring the Daiei Hawks. I guess you have to be a maniac about Japanese baseball to understand. But I'm only going to feature the food.

As Yukio knew the owner of the place, he joined us for a short spell and brought out some shochu from Miyazaki that wasn't listed on the menu. Very smooth tasting shochu - even though I prefer Nihon-shu myself.

Long time employee and acquaintance of Yukio's - Makoto-san. As you can see in the background, the izakaya is full of pictures of baseball players and other celebrities. The table we were sitting at which also served as a display case was a bunch of signed baseballs as well as the bat and batting glove of Seattle Mariner's superstar - Ichiro.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

As we spent last weekend at Kinungawa Hotsprings in Tochigi Prefecture, I had to go in search of the prefecture's microbrew. Luck was on my side as I found some Nikko Beer. I tried the three styles - black, lager (which I drank at the hotel), and the Syu which I tried at home. Me, I enjoyed the black beer (as I'm a big fan of dark beers). The Syu wasn't bad either. The lager was average, nothing to write home about.

Okay, okay, this isn't a ramen shop. It is a soba shop called [Hama Ichi]. As dinner and breakfast are served at the hotel when we stayed in Kinugawa, we had to look elsewhere to eat lunch. Although, we were hoping to eat some ramen, the only ramen shop we came across was closed. So we settled for soba instead. There wasn't anything special about this place, but it wasn't bad either. I had the maitake mushroom soba, while Mikako ordered the sansai (mountain vegetables) soba. Reiko had the store specialty kamo tsuke soba while Yukio went with the zaru soba with a mini katsudon as well.

Monday, November 23, 2009

It was nearing our time to head back to the station to catch the train that would take us back to Tokyo. But as we still had a little time, we checked out all the gift shops and went back to the foot bath at the station. We did more hiking today and could really use a soak in the bath - unfortunately, I little trip was about to end.

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Once we were down the mountain, we went to a little shop that kindly watched our luggage. The shop also featured a small fishing pond so we tried our hand at catching some trout. Unfortunately, Yukio, Reiko and I couldn't make a single catch.

The following pictures of the Kinugawa River were taken from the standing in the middle of the bridge.

下記の鬼怒川の写真は橋の真ん中から撮ったもの。

Looks like somebody has a major fear of heights.

We finally visited the last Kinuta as well.

最後の鬼怒太も会った。

Standing Kinuta / 鬼怒太 「楯鬼（たておに）」

Once we crossed the bridge, there was a sign pointing to a waterfall viewpoint and an observation viewpoint. Both were only 5 minutes walking distance. By this time, we figured it was too late to head to the Tobu World Square and enjoy it so we opted to check out the observation deck.

橋を渡ったら、滝と展望台に行けるサインがあった。両方は徒歩で５分位。今日は東武ワールドスクェアを諦めて、展望台を目指した。

Looking back at the bridge as we make our way to the observation deck.

展望台目指す途中に振り返って見た鬼怒楯岩大吊橋。

We had to walk through this tunnel to get to the observation deck.

このトネルの向こうに展望台がある。

Inside the tunnel.

トネルの中。

Oh no! More climbing!! But before we made our way to the observation deck, we checked out the small shrine called the "Tateiwa Kinu Hime Shrine".